University of Valley Forge to Close

Strapped for cash and under scrutiny from its accreditor, University of Valley Forge officials announced this week that the small, private institution will close after the summer semester.

The move comes roughly a month before the Pennsylvania university’s next academic year was set to begin.

“After much prayer, careful consideration, and consultation, the Board of Trustees of the University of Valley Forge has made the difficult and painful decision to suspend academic operations at the conclusion of the Summer 2026 semester,” trustees wrote in a statement.

The Board of Trustees wrote in the Wednesday announcement that the decision followed “extensive efforts to address the University’s financial challenges, pursue strategic partnerships, and identify sustainable paths forward.” But ultimately the challenges proved insurmountable.

The closure of the 87-year-old university comes just over a month after UVF’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, placed it on show cause status. The accreditor noted last month it had concerns about Valley Forge’s financial stability and governance and asked it to demonstrate adequate resources and a long-term financial plan.

Instead, the university will close before the next academic year. The move was preceded by years of declining enrollment. While Valley Forge has hovered between 500 and 600 students in recent years, its head count was just under 900 in fall 2016, according to federal enrollment data.

As enrollment dwindled, so did the university’s finances. Publicly available financial documents show that Valley Forge has been operating with a persistent deficit for most of the last decade.

The latest available documents show a university with minimal assets, significant debt and a meager and heavily restricted endowment. Valley Forge’s endowment was last valued in public documents at $2.8 million, though the university had borrowed heavily from those funds. Financial documents show the university owed $1.7 million to its endowment from a prior loan.

But warning signs about Valley Forge’s financial precarity had been visible for years. 

The U.S. Department of Education initially placed Valley Forge on heightened cash monitoring status in 2015, which requires greater federal oversight of university finances. Although Valley Forge was removed from HCM status in 2017, it was again hit with that designation in early 2021 and required to place $635,014 into an account with the department to ensure access to federal financial aid after ED determined Valley Forge did not meet its financial responsibility metrics. The university has remained on heightened cash monitoring since then.

Valley Forge is one of several institutions to announce plans to close this year and the first in Pennsylvania—a state that has lost multiple colleges in recent years. (More closures are ahead as Pennsylvania State University plans to shutter seven Commonwealth Campuses in 2027.)

Other nonprofit colleges that have announced closures this year include: